• TotalFinder increases the usability of your Finder space in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion. TotalFinder adds the ability to create tabbed workspaces in the Finder.
• Your Mac’s memory is vital to its performance. Overloaded hard drives, hard cached data and large amounts of stored cookies are devastating for your Mac’s power. Disc Cleaner will route through the depths of your system identifying all the hidden areas that are consuming your Mac’s performance.
• TotalFinder is a plugin for Finder.app which adds tabs like those in Google Chrome, dual panels similar to TotalCommander, and other improvements.
• Totalfinder cracked for mac – is a Mac system tool dedicated to the Mac OS platform. Multiple Finder windows can be displayed in the same window. Just like Chrome’s tab bar, this is a very aspect operation, adding tabs, notifications, hotkeys and other functions to the Finder.

TotalFinder for Mac offers a number of powerful upgrades over the default tools found in OS X Finder. While the file browsing experience on a Mac is good, TotalFinder adds tools that many users.

The other day, my wife brought up a viable point whilst moving some files around on her computer. Both of us are former Windows-users, and in the Windows Explorer, folders can be shown first, before any other file content. This functionality is missing from Mac’s Finder (though some sort options do come close).

Since my switch over to Mac about 5 years ago, I haven’t had a particular beef with this fact. However, once my wife pointed it out, I did begin to notice a few occasions where I wouldn’t mind my folders being on the top of my Finder window, above the other content. So, I decided to look into this issue, and came across TotalFinder, which is a Finder plugin of sorts that allows for all kinds of nifty functionality tweaks.

I thought I’d take a minute and chronicle my experience with TotalFinder version 1.3.2 on Mac OS X Lion, since there don’t seem to be very many recent reviews out there on the web.

Installation: a snap. TotalFinder integrates itself perfectly with Finder, and just replaces the original Finder icon with a snazzier version. All of the program’s preferences are available from either the Finder Preferences menu, or via a menu bar icon.

Key Features: TotalFinder allows for a number of tweaks to the Finder experience, and I’m going to mention my favorites. First, obviously, the ability to sort your files folders-first. This is done via the Tweaks pref pane, and even comes with a hotkey that allows you to toggle this feature (as do nearly all of TotalFinder’s tweaks).

The TotalFinder preferences window, Tweaks pane.

Totalfinder Cho Mac

For me as a web designer, I like the ability to toggle hidden files on and off, especially when needing access to the .htaccess file of a website I’m building. This used to be accomplished for me via the Terminal, and I’d need to Google the command each time I used it because I am not well-versed in Mac-Terminal-ese. Like the “folders-first” tweak, this function can be hotkey-activated.

For those of you who are engrained in the ways of cut/paste, you may have noticed that Mac OS Finder lacks this capability, at least in the way you’re used to seeing it. In Lion, you can now Copy and Move, which essentially does the same thing as cut/paste…cmd+c and then option+cmd+v. But, TotalFinder brings back the cmd-x / cmd-v workflow, and for me this just makes more sense than the way Apple’s decided to do it.

Tabbed browsing is another one that’s probably pretty obvious. Since the days of good ol’ IE 6, most new browsers have come with a tab feature, which is pretty handy. I get annoyed when sifting through tons of Finder windows, and TotalFinder brings the great tabbed browser experience we’re used to into the Finder, same keyboard shortcuts and all.

Totalfinder For Mac

Dual Mode is another great feature, which places two Finder windows side-by-side for easy file-dragging. By default, when turning on Dual Mode (cmd-U), TotalFinder integrates your current tab with the next tab, displaying them in the same window. You’re still free to browse either of them independently, and dragging and dropping files between the two panes is even easier than cut/paste (if you ask me).

Finally, one of my most favorite features of TotalFinder is the Visor. You’re always one hotkey away from your Finder window, which will pop up from the bottom of your screen. It’s handy to keep your Finder under wraps this way…as a user of multiple Desktops and two monitors on my Mac, I often find myself with “rogue” Finder windows on my various screens…and the Visor helps to control this. You also have some settings you can tweak to “pin” the visor – pinning the visor keeps it visible even when you switch applications on your Mac. The Visor’s height is customizable as well.

Beefs: I only have a couple of small beefs with TotalFinder, and they are both with the Visor. Often, I have cause to drag files into other open files (pictures into Word, images into Fireworks or Photoshop). So, I pull up my Visor, click and hold to grab the file I want to insert, and then convention would suggest that I could close the Visor again and drop it into the app I was previously using. However, when in the middle of a click-and-drag operation, TotalFinder doesn’t respond to hotkey commands…and in fact queues them for later. Thus, if I’ve hit the hotkey a few times, this results in the Visor opening and closing repeatedly after my file drag is completed (or aborted). I’ve gotten around this by cmd-tabbing back to the app I was using, which works fine…I’d just prefer to hit the same hotkey again to close the Visor instead of having to use a different hotkey to change apps.

Beef number two is the time delay when the Visor first opens. If you close all Visor windows, and then trigger the Visor, it takes almost a full second (on my machine) to pop up. I suppose I need to just get in the habit of not closing all of the Visor windows, because once you’ve “primed” the Visor with that first window, it responds instantly.

Conclusion: TotalFinder offers many shortcuts, tweaks, and added bits of functionality to my Finder, and I’ve discovered that I use many of them daily. Are they essential to the workflow of my machine? Well…I would argue that at least the Visor and tabbed browsing are. Cut and Paste is also nice, but I’ve more or less retrained myself to drag and drop or Copy and Move.

The bottom line: I recommend TotalFinder for anyone who spends significant time working at your Mac. For the casual user, this may not be essential, but as I spend most of my working hours in a day at my computer, I’ve found TotalFinder to be an integral part of my workflow. If you’re not convinced yet, the developer has a 14-day free trial available – visit the TotalFinder website and give it a shot.

Binaryage

A permanent TotalFinder license is $18, but that’s a very good price, especially since you also get a very active developer (Antonin) who uses his own product daily. He’s already in development of version 1.4, which will be compatible with Mountain Lion once it’s released this summer.

Did my article help you? I’d love to hear about it! Please feel free to comment (top left), and / or send me an e-mail – mslibera (at) uncg (dot) edu